Synchronization among plural browsers

Abstract

A technique for synchronizing a visual browser and a voice browser. A visual browser is used to navigate through visual content, such as WML pages. During the navigation, the visual browser creates a historical record of events that have occurred during the navigation. The voice browser uses this historical record to navigate the content in the same manner as occurred on the visual browser, thereby synchronizing to a state equivalent to that of the visual browser. The creation of the historical record may be performed by using a script to trap events, where the script contains code that records the trapped events. The synchronization technique may be used with a multi-modal application that permits the mode of input / output (I / O) to be changed between visual and voice browsers. When the mode is changed from visual to voice, the record of events captured by the visual browser is provided to the voice browser, thereby allowing the I / O mode to change seamlessly from visual to voice. Likewise, the voice browser captures events which may be provided to the visual browser when the I / O mode is changed from voice to visual.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED CASES[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 304,499, entitled “Synchronization Among Plural Browsers,” filed on Jul. 11, 2001.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates generally to the field of networked computing. More particularly, the invention provides a technique for synchronizing the state of plural browsers at various levels of granularity. The technique may be used to synchronize between visual and voice browsers in wireless multi-modal applications.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Increasingly, wireless communications devices such as wireless telephones are becoming adapted for use with the Internet. It is estimated that, by the year 2003, half of all Internet traffic will come from wireless devices. Many present-day wireless telephones have at least some capability not only to capture and render audio information, but also to allow users to interact with data using a visual display and som...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0013]The present invention's technique of synchronizing browsers may, for example, be deployed in an architecture that supports wireless multi-modal applications. For example, a wireless handset may have a browser that renders WML, plus “dumb” audio-rendering capability that produces audio from a digital signal but does not generate an audio signal from higher-level information. The generation of audio signals may be performed by a voice browser that generates audio signals from VXML input, and which is located remotely from the handset. The technique of the present invention may be used to synchronize the voice and visual browsers, such that the user can change between visual I / O and audio I / O.

Problems solved by technology

While wireless data access is clearly a boon to electronic device users, there is a notable deficiency in the current wireless data access technology: a user must generally choose to interact with the data either using the voice components of the wireless device (i.e., microphone and speaker), or using the visual components (i.e., screen and keypad), but cannot use both at the same time.

It is convenient to speak the name of the desired location as input to the application, but it is cumbersome to receive the directions themselves in the form of speech.

One problem that impedes the integrated and combined use of voice and visual interfaces to data is that each mode of communication generally requires its own browser.

However, the handset is generally “dumb” with respect to voice—i.e., it can capture and render audio signals, but does not have the means to browse and navigate content based on the content of the received audio, or to generate audio signals based on VXML data.

Because the voice and visual browsers are separate, it is difficult to switch seamlessly back and forth between a visual and voice modes of interacting with wireless data, because the voice browser may be unaware of what the visual browser is doing and vice versa.

If the user then decides to switch to the voice interface, the voice browser does not know where the user has navigated to because it is unaware of what the visual browser has been doing.

Upon switching to a voice interface, the voice browser can simply re-start the user at a “home” URL, but this is inconvenient for the user because the user loses the benefit of all of the navigation that has already been performed.

The problem, in this example, is that the voice and visual browsers are not “synchronized.”

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